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Electrolux Robot Vacuum Cleaner
An anonymous reader writes "Modelled on an ancient arthropod the Electrolux Trilobite is in stores from Friday and should cost around £999." It isn't the first robot vacuum, but they do claim it automatically recharges itself (which I don't think the Roomba does). And for only 8 times the price! A bargain. Electrolux's website has some more information.
I've heard these things kinda suck...
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Remember this quote from the article:
... when they turn against us.
Magnetic strips must be placed at doorways and near stairs to act as invisible walls and stop it plunging to its doom down a flight of steps.
What's this "vacuuming" technology you speak of?
I seem to recall reading this somewhere... oh here ooops :-)
On another note I got to watch one of these do there thing a while back, and while the concept seems cool they tend to bump into feet a litle too much. It's like a dog trying to hump your leg
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This must be news about the US release.They (Trilobite) have been available in Europe and Sweden for two years. Very new(s) indeed.
Roomba has an add-on self charger. Around $50 if I remember, at Bed Bath & Beyond (or was it Linen's and Things? they look identicle to me when I get inside the door).
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Seriously ... this is cool!
Electrolux are a huge mainstream consumer goods company so that they have the balls to develop and market this is fantastic and it will spur others on, which will reduce costs and expand the market.
I'm 31 - when I was a child they promised us a life cast free from housework with more time for leisure.
While it's always been tantalisingly close, most products have been out of the reach of the general consumer, or produced by esoteric manufacturers that are not household names.
Now they are actually starting to deliver. I salut you, Electrolux!
"The Trilobite® is the world's first automatic vacuum cleaner." As usual, Electrolux is using falsehood in advertising. There are older robosweepers than this one. When I was in college in 1989, I thought trying to sell Elecrolux sweepers would be a good paying job to help get me through. Not only did the damn things cost nearly $2000 dollars, but all their "exclusive features" were duplicated by other brands. The only people willing to buy a $2000 sweeper had to apply for credit, and were always turned down. I had to go back to delivering pizzas as that "job" for straight commissions only cost me money. Any product hawked by door-to-door salesman is crap.
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The way you normally use the Roomba is you set the room up so the Roomba can't escape, and you let it go. It does the room, and then chirps when it's done (or stuck). If you don't lock the roomba into the room, it'll wander the whole house but not really get anything done since one charge (of either machine) is really only enough battery to do one room.
To automatically recharge, the charger would need to be in the same room as the vacuum cleaner. If you have two floors, or you have doors, steps, or other obstacles, I imagine that part of it wouldn't work so well - you'd have to keep hauling the charger around as well as the vacuum.
Also unless the AI is good enough that the thing really can navigate itself around a changing environment (hey there wasn't a dog there last time) and make it's way back to the charger before dying every time, I imagine you'd find a dead Trilobyte fairly frequently.
The Roomba normaly takes 12 hours to charge, but if you get the fast charger, it charges in an hour and a half. The fast charger is $69, but well worth it.
And if you buy it from http://www.hammacher.com, they give you a lifetime warranty! I'm wondering if they're going to regret that someday..
So unless this thing shows some other serious advantage over the Roomba, I can't see how it justifies the price..
And I'm not sure how they can say "While other firms have shown off prototype robot cleaners, Electrolux is the first to put one into production.", the Roomba has been on the market for a while now.
- Steve
Of course, being circular it can't vacuum corners, so you'll have to buy a seperate vac and do that bit yourself. What a fantastic design.
Does it make R2D2 noises?
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Do stairs? Put itself away when it's done? For a grand, it better empty itself in the trash bin, too!
this sucker looks a hell of a lot like the roomba, as stated in the post. we sell (or tried to sell) the roombas where I work for $199.99, and they sold like crapcakes. Nada. People want a vacuum that can hold more than a handful of dust.
I daresay this version will have the same problems owing largely to its short profile. no room! now, if part of the auto-charge trip included an auto-discharge (of waste tray contents) then I think more people might consider dropping that kind of money.
just my 19,999 cents. [tax not included]
el cobardo anonimo
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Vaccuuming is a great exercise. For us fat, lazy computer geeks, we can actually benefit from doing it.
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Seriously, this is something every guy wants and needs! Besides, I have promised my better half that when we are living together, I will take care of the vacuuming ;).
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It's their only product that doesn't suck.
Thank you. I'll be here all week.
I've used mine perhaps 20 times since I bought it, and it has a lot of problems now. Sometimes it just stops in the middle of the room and beeps its "I'm stuck" sound, even though its not. The battery has basically died to where it might run ten minutes on a full charge.
Its an interesting device, but I've not been terribly happy about how its aged in the six months I've had it...
Rectangular rooms. Result: dirty corners.
--- Ban humanity.
I would like to see how this can deal with my stairs!! And what if I leave the charging unit down stairs while ol' trill is cleaning up - upstairs.
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I've used mine perhaps 20 times since I bought it, and it has a lot of problems now. Sometimes it just stops in the middle of the room and beeps its "I'm stuck" sound, even though its not.
Have you also cleared the brushes 20 times? I didn't think so. You're supposed to do that after every run. Wrapped up hair can provide enough friction that it thinks it's stuck.
the CEO of Electrolux (Michael Trechov) visited my engineering school in Sweden and told us about this new cool product - the robot vacuum cleaner. He was using a prototype at home.
I wonder what took them so long to go to market...
Tor
. . . they built on top of rat brain cells? Like a rat, does it crawl into the walls to dump it's load of dust and dirt?
Now, if it will just bring me a beer, I could get rid of my girlfriend!
If a vacuum cleaner can replace your girlfriend, then I'm not going to ask what you're going to use the hose attachment for...
Besides, the only reason I would want one is if i could control it from work via internet and have it chase around the cats. (that would be great)
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But they sell anyway, because they fill an important vacuum in the product line.
Check out its stunning personality here. It bleeps, bloops, and whines while cleaning, which makes it about fifty times as personable as I am while I'm doing my chores.
This promotional site has been up for quite some time, so I had no idea it would take so long to get the Trilobite to market. Personally, I'd prefer a cuttlefish-like robot that swims around my sink and cleans my dishes while blub-blub-blubbing.
I heard a lecture from the CEO of Electrolux when this was in development five years ago, this is what he told us.
You are absolutely right about the reaching corners part. But apparently, they had done tests with people vacuuming and found that most people miss patches here and there. Thus while the robot does miss corners, it has slightly higher covering percentage overall.
Tor
I wonder if I can sue the company if my cat needs therapy after a few weeks of this robot zooming around my floor.
For cat-chasing from your desk at work, I suggest getting one of the little plantraco rovers, the internet control kit, and the wireless camera. Use webcam software and a cheap winTV vid cap card to stream video of what the rover "sees," and use the internet-connected controller to drive it around. They even have a demo of it where you can drive a rover at there office from your web browser here.
That bit about the cat would make it worth it to me if I had a cat and didn't already have one...
I have a Roomba, and I love it..
It requires a fair amount of cleaning to keep it running right at first, but once you've gotten your carpet really clean, it doesn't pull up as much stuff during every cleaning if you let him run often enough. Once you get all the heavy dirt up, and there's not much to pick up, the Roomba really does well...
I've never noticed the Roomba having a problem getting the whole room, either. I think the wall detection thing is just a $2,000 gimmick.
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I checked out the Trilobite in the shop a few months ago, and the first thing that struck me was the noise. You don't want to stay in the same room while it is doing it's thing...
Secondly, it should digest and live off the dust, which is mainly human skin, so rich in protein. I'm thinking a small bacterial engine that can turn dust into glucose, and pass that onto a glucose fuel cell of some kind.
Thirdly, should be really cheap. I don't want to have to take out my credit card each time I step on the cleaner by mistake. I'm thinking that the ideal model would actually be organic, which makes sense, given the bacterial engine, and so it could actually breed. Hey, why not?
Forthly, I want a powerful AI engine that can avoid stairs and feet, and will search for dust where it's most prevelant, namely in corners and in those hard-to-reach areas.
Fifthly, why not make it able to walk up walls... perhaps using those little sticky feet that pickup the dust so well.
Lastly, since the model is small, it should package its collected dust (after bacterial digestion) into easy-to-sweep nodules. This will eliminate any need for dust bags, discharging stations, etc.
Reviewing my design against the available models, I think the most practical solution would be to use standard breeding techniques combined with genetic engineering to create a species of super cockroaches that live off dust. There may be a small market acceptance problem, but I believe this can be overcome by finding a new name and a cute logo... how about "RoboRoach"?
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Anyway, October 2002 I showed the Trilobite actually working in a stylish living-room type setting, actually a lounge area we set up in the Swedish Embassy in Tokyo for a few weeks of events. Electrolux was a sponsor. It was made almost entirely by Electrolux, with some changes for the Japanese market provided by Toshiba (mainly electrical and marketing I believe).
Here is a page in Japanese showing the Trilobite on sale for 268,000 yen. Not cheap for sure.
The unit is astounding when you try it, it navigates around table legs and goes under sofas, and starts up and shuts down by itself (and docks itself too). One of the areas they wanted to improve was to make it quieter so that may have been done already. (the Japanese page says 65dB) It is kind of like an Aibo that actually does work for you. It also walks around you, not the other way around.
We had one in the 'house of the future' as part of the IEE's Faraday Lecture. I was a presenter of this lecture and had to make this thing work on stage in front of 1500 people. All I can say is that it's the most unpredictable gadgets ever, it never did what it was meant to do. The battery life is pants, it hardly holds any 'dust'.
It almost fell off the stage during one show...
http://www.iee.org/Events/Lectrs/Faraday/2001/